I have fancied cameras on phones for as long as I can remember. My fascination perhaps stems from the fact our phones, despite continued diligence from brands for almost 20 years now, haven’t fully replaced actual cameras. Over the years, however, phones have come dangerously close to mimicking actual cameras, and Vivo is among the brands leading this crusade.
Vivo’s flagship phone cameras — primarily its X series — have always successfully armed me with a sense of confidence in my skills as a photographer. Earlier devices have aced at taking portraits and disregarding any difficulties other phones might face in low lighting. The latest Vivo X200 Pro doubles down on that feeling with better hardware, improved processing capabilities, and a range of new modes to help you seize moments with much more ease.
What makes the Vivo X200 Pro’s hardware special
The Vivo X200 Pro’s triple rear camera stack is reformed. For the primary camera, Vivo has moved away from the 1-inch sensors seen on the X100 Pro and the China-exclusive X100 Ultra. Instead, there is a new Sony LYT-818 sensor, which, despite having the same 50MP resolution, is physically smaller.
Despite the size, Sony claims the new sensor can take sharper photos, especially with its ability to process HDR images faster and eliminate visual noise. This sensor is second in line, after the LYT-808 from the OnePlus 12, to stack two layers of light-sensitive transistors for better light absorption despite covering a smaller surface area.
The star of the show, however, is the new 200MP telephoto camera on the Vivo X200 Pro. It packs a Samsung ISOCELL HP9, 1/1.4-inch format CMOS sensor specially designed for telephoto cameras. The sensor’s biggest highlight is its ability to combine 16 pixels (grids of 4×4) into a single giant pixel, resulting in much brighter and more detailed images, even at high levels of zoom. Paired with a 3.7x periscopic lens, this telephoto camera can take crisp shots even at high zoom values.
The third camera, a 50MP ultrawide sensor, feels slightly less exciting, especially since it has been untouched from the previous generation. It still benefits from Vivo’s latest in-house “V3+” imagining chip, which is specifically designed to accelerate camera-related tasks alongside the flagship Dimensity 9400 chipset.
The Vivo X200 Pro also benefits from the company’s longstanding union with imaging brand Zeiss. The lenses used on the X200 Pro’s cameras are certified by Zeiss as “Apochromatic” lenses, which are better at correcting chromatic and spherical aberrations — the color fringes we see along edges or curves. All lenses also come with Zeiss’ T* (pronounced T-Star) coating that reduces flaring and reflections when strong lights fall directly onto the lens. These features combined prevent cloudiness in images caused by harsh or direct lighting.
The better hardware already endows the X200 Pro with exceptional imaging abilities, but the software remains crucial to ensure its success. Thankfully, Vivo has done a fair bit of optimization and included new specialized modes for different scenarios.
In this article, I will focus on two modes — Landscape and Street Photography — that are meant to let you tame the phenomenal hardware without much effort.
Special modes that capture special moments
These two camera modes are designed to reduce the load of executive decisions while taking pictures. Instead, you can focus on capturing the moment. Or, if you, like me, have trouble immediately visualizing a great shot and simply capture dozens of seemingly good scenes that you can filter out later, these modes will only shower you with sufficient confidence to take more shots, as they have endowed me.
One by one, I will take you through each of the functions and how they can be utilized to make capturing photos much easier.
Landscape Mode
The Vivo X200 Pro has a humongous library of features in the standard Photo mode. To prevent these from overwhelming you, Vivo has a simplified mode called Landscape. Despite its naming, the mode is designed to suit almost every scenario and allow you to tackle a range of scenes without ever having to use a tripod.
I like to compare the Landscape mode with an iPhone’s camera. With fewer options than the standard Photo mode, you’re less likely to feel paralyzed by the number of choices. Moreover, it automatically judges if you need to use the Night mode and also gives you a host of options for color filters suited for different scenarios along with several long exposure settings to capture trails of moving objects in a smooth fashion.
Not just that but the Landscape mode also includes panorama and astrophotography modes. There’s even an AR planetarium for times when you want to point the phone toward the sky and engage in some stargazing.
While it is practically impossible to confine Vivo X200 Pro’s capabilities and craft in a few thousands words, I wish to take you through some of the impressive shots I have captured with the phone.
To keep things simple, I have used presets from the Camera app — though you can take full control with the Pro mode if you’d like to. I also took the liberty of shooting both in landscape and portrait layout for the images, though I will group similar ones together, starting first with these wide-range Landscape shots I took with the Vivo X200 Pro.
The first thing I want to emphasize is how well the Vivo X200 Pro re-creates colors, preserving the soul of the pictures. The algae on the building in the first image is distinct from the plants growing over the old, probably 19th-century, structure in the leftmost image. Would you be surprised to know I took that at 30x zoom?
Likewise, the myriad shades in the rightmost image are hugely preserved by the X20 Pro. Again, the image was snapped with the telephoto from more than 10 feet away, yet the phone managed to retain nearly 100% of the details.
Next, I want to emphasize the natural blur from the telephoto camera without engaging the portrait mode. This is attributed to the large 200MP sensor that can zoom in fairly close without requiring you to actually go very close. In both images, a natural separation between the objects in focus. The Vivo phone also manages to artfully separate one branch of leaves from another, something a lot of phones struggle with since they use primary colors to detect object distance.
In the next set, I challenged the Vivo X200 Pro a bit more by including a portion of the sky. While the HDR kicks in, you wouldn’t see any part of the images seeming grainy or overblown in exposure to compensate for the bright background.
In the rightmost image, the X200 Pro is face-to-face with the sun but still manages to capture some colors instead of completely foreshadowing the hand-knit kite in the front.
The Vivo X200 Pro’s Landscape mode continues to amaze even in low light. These shots that follow maintain a high level of details, especially around edges or engravings on the beams and other structures — although far less compared to shots from during the day. And while it may not look like it from the images, the actual surroundings were much darker than you see here in the photos.
This is because the Vivo X200 Pro automatically detects the need for a longer exposure of a few seconds in low-light shots. And while the first two images are taken with three- to five-second-long shutters, both of them were captured handheld and without resting the phone anywhere.
In the rightmost image, I did rest one edge of the phone while keeping the other edge steady with my finger to capture the trail of water flowing from these fountains. Despite a longer shutter than the other two images, the Vivo X200 Pro stresses on capturing a smoother trail of water rather than blowing the exposure on the entire image, which is fairly impressive.
While it may sound like I am raving about the phone’s camera and overlooking its flaws, it is for a reason. I have yet to see a use a phone that takes consistently good images, and almost none of them require corrections or edits in post-processing. That said, I took hundreds of photos and only chose the best dozen from the lot.
Like any other camera, there is a curve to learning the quirks of the Vivo X200 Pro’s cameras, but they are fairly easy to master. If I, as someone who has just basic knowledge of how to frame photos, can capture these beautiful images, I have faith that anyone with a bit more interest in photography than me can excel with this camera.
That said, I am moving on to the second part of my review, which revolves around capturing more animate objects — this time on the streets of New Delhi, India.
Street Photography
Street photography revolves around capturing the dynamics of a busy scene while preserving the essence of something that stands out or does not necessarily fit in. Deliberation is its nemesis, and one must be instant before the scene changes, and you are left with is a fleeting mental imprint of what could have been a beautiful image — if only you could capture it.
Vivo’s Street Photography mode, newly introduced with the X200 series, is designed around solving that problem. It is meant to empower you to snap photos instantly without worrying about finding the right settings right before each shot, especially in moments with sparks of inspiration. Vivo has mastered a few aspects to ensure the mode delivers the experience it promises.
First, Vivo X200 Pro’s Street Photography mode gets an interface entirely different from the main Camera app (despite the mode being a part of it). The design ideology used here looks like a blend of iconography used on cameras and some cheeky inspiration from a primitive Instagram interface. I’m not complaining as I thoroughly like the simple elements, easily readable text, and fewer options to choose from.
To limit distractions, the Street Photography mode only lets you change a few key attributes, such as white balance, aperture, shutter speed, exposure value, and the focal lengths.
At the bottom, a prominent shutter button occupies most of the attention, while an icon to add preset color filters sits next to it. You can also toggle metering modes between center-weighted and spot or choose a hyperfocal distance for objects beyond the lens’ normal range of focus.
- 1.
Focal length settings - 2.
Color filter presets
Accessing the Street Photography mode is also simple; you just tap the upward-facing arrow at the bottom of the app when it is in Photo mode. For even quicker entry, you can press the volume down button in two quick successions and the mode opens up by default. The Camera app also remembers whether you closed it in the Street Photography or the regular Photo mode and opens it the next time you open it.
If you switch between a few different styles, Vivo also allows you to save up to three presets for combinations of your preferred settings in Street Photography mode.
Words may not do justice to what the Street Mode is capable of. So, here are several examples of photos I took with the Vivo X200 Pro on a real Indian street.
The idea here was to capture the essence of each scene and especially encapsulating emotions on faces. All these shots below were taken while the subjects or I were moving.
Aligning with Vivo’s claims, there is almost zero shutter lag, and X200 Pro captures these scenes without any major blurring due to the movements — not to forget the unspoiled colors in the images.
The rightmost image admittedly looks oversaturated beyond taste because it was taken with the Vivid color setting in the Street Mode. But not all the images captured with the Vivid color filter appear displeasing. In fact, I find the vibrancy to add to the soul of these images and make them more intense — artificially but tastefully.
The images have a fascinating level of detail, which feels unimaginably good for a phone camera, especially when you realize none of these have been retouched. They were simply used as they were shot on the phone.
The next couple of shots also capture the spirit of action without being disrupted by minimal motion blur. Yes, there is some blurring in parts of these photos, but I feel it lends a sense that the subjects are moving, probably at a high pace.
Likewise, the images below preserve the spirit of wintering.
In addition to the Vivid color profile, the X200 Pro also has a black-and-white overlay, automatically adjusting the light and dark portions of any scene to fit the shades of gray.
The images below capture a blend of intense action and the hope for an impending change, and the same shots in color would probably not do the same justice to these scenes.
Contrastingly, these black-and-white shots below denote a feeling of inertness. Equally intense, I must say.
But even without people in sight (or focus), the Street Mode doesn’t fail to clutch the varying colors of a street, almost with the same precision as it does in the Landscape mode.
Lastly, the X200 Pro can stitch some binding stories, even in low light. While the sharpness in images is less than daylight images, the essence is preserved to a great extent.
I’d choose Vivo X200 Pro over any other phone
A photograph is worth a thousand words; it is popularly iterated. But the thousand-word adage remains refuted if you can’t capture the picture in the right moment. The Vivo X200 Pro has helped me seize some very special moments that may look very average to the eyes, especially since moments like these are short-lived and often evade our attention. The phone not only makes taking beautiful pictures a nearly effortless task but also inspires me to take many more images.
That’s where I believe the real alchemy of technology lies. In my view, technology’s role is to inspire and aid us in realizing our imagination, not overwhelm us in endless streams of information. Looking back at these images I took mindlessly, I feel a concoction of emotions brewing within. And I feel this is precisely what Vivo intended to do by making photography a less technical and a more emotional process for non-photographers like me.
While the X200 Pro is yet another device in the list of phones intended to replace cameras, I am sure it sits at the top of the pyramid for me when it comes to photography and will be my first choice over any other phone.
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